Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

Friday, November 1, 2013

The Washington Times Catches Up To The Tattler

(Mod: Earlier this week we wrote a little bit about former
Soviet planner and now SCAG head functionary Hasan Ikhrata's plan to put
black boxes in privately owned automobiles so that we can be tracked,
taxed and watched. Fortunately we are not the only ones troubled by
this.)

Former Soviet official behind black box "track & tax" of US drivers(The Washington Times link): The
California bureaucrat behind a big brother plan to track vehicles and
“tax by the mile” worked as a government transportation planner in the
former USSR.

Hasan Ikhrata, Executive Director of the Southern California Association
of Governments (SCAG), who told the Los Angeles Times “This really is a
must for our nation. It is not a matter of something we might choose to
do,” worked for the Moscow Metro Corporation, according to his official
SCAG biography.

SCAG foresees mandatory tracking of all California motorists by 2025. A
black box tax-by-the-mile pilot program is underway in Oregon and
several other states. Some of the methods Oregon is experimenting with
involve using GPS to track miles driven by program participants.

Ikhrata’s former employer Moscow Metro announced plans in July to track
the movements of individual passengers on subways by tracking the SIM
cards in their mobile phones, even if the phones are powered off,
according to RT. Police operations chief of the Moscow metro, Andrey
Mokhov argues that the tactic is legal because “By law, we are not
allowed to trace a person without appropriate sanctions…but we can keep
track of the property of companies, which is exactly what SIM cards
are.”

Although Ikhrata no longer spends his days working as a Moscow planner,
he appears to have imported into California’s sprawling bureaucracy an
instinct which runs unchecked inside the iron machinery of the world’s
most authoritarian governments: track, surveil, and ultimately control
everything citizens do.

Former Soviet official behind black box "track & tax" of US drivers

WASHINGTON, October 30, 2013 —
The California bureaucrat behind a big brother plan to track vehicles
and “tax by the mile” worked as a government transportation planner in
the former USSR.

Hasan Ikhrata, Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), who told the Los Angeles Times
“This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something
we might choose to do,” worked for the Moscow Metro Corporation,
according to his official SCAG biography.

SCAG foresees mandatory tracking of all
California motorists by 2025. A black box tax-by-the-mile pilot program
is underway in Oregon and several other states. Some of the methods
Oregon is experimenting with involve using GPS to track miles driven by
program participants.

Ikhrata’s former employer Moscow Metro announced
plans in July to track the movements of individual passengers on
subways by tracking the SIM cards in their mobile phones, even if the
phones are powered off, according to RT.
Police operations chief of the Moscow metro, Andrey Mokhov argues that
the tactic is legal because “By law, we are not allowed to trace a
person without appropriate sanctions…but we can keep track of the
property of companies, which is exactly what SIM cards are.”

Although Ikhrata no longer spends his days
working as a Moscow planner, he appears to have imported into
California’s sprawling bureaucracy an instinct which runs unchecked
inside the iron machinery of the world’s most authoritarian
governments: track, surveil, and ultimately control everything citizens
do.

Proponents of the mileage tracking and taxing
programs argue that new streams of revenue are needed to pay for roads
because Congress refuses to raise federal gas taxes. Privacy groups
fear that the scheme is a Trojan horse which is really designed to track
the movements of anyone with a car. The Tea Party, the ACLU, and
privacy groups are raising the alarm over the prospect of governments
tracking the movements of Americans in their own vehicles.

According to his SCAG biography, “Mr. Ikhrata
holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Civil and Industrial
Engineering from Zaporozhye University in the former Soviet Union”.

A 2008 SCAG press release announcing the
appointment of Ikhrata to the position of Executive Director noted that
he was chosen “from a diverse pool of candidates from across the
country”, which was eventually narrowed down to six interviewees.

At the time of his hiring, Ikhrata was a Ph.D.
candidate in Urban Planning and Transportation from the University of
Southern California, states the press release. Based on his current
biography at SCAG, it appears that five years later he is still a Ph.D.
candidate.

“Hasan is a longtime resident of San Bernardino County” states the 2008 press release.

SCAG is the largest metropolitan planning
organization in the United States, and serves 18,000,000 people living
in Imperial County, Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County,
San Bernardino County and Ventura County.